The Lonely Century

THE LONELY CENTURY - BY NOREENA HERTZ
It’s a sign of our times that today I can order companionship as easily as I can a cheeseburger with just a few
taps on my phone, that what I call a Loneliness Economy has emerged to support—and in some cases exploit
—those who feel alone. But in the twenty-first century, the loneliest century we have known, Brittany’s
overworked professionals are not the only ones suffering; the tentacles of loneliness reach much further.
Even before the coronavirus triggered a “social recession” with its toxification of face-to-face contact, three in
five U.S. adults considered themselves lonely. In Europe, it was a similar story. In Germany, two-thirds of the
population believed loneliness to be a serious problem. Almost a third of Dutch nationals admitted to being
lonely, one in ten severely so. In Sweden, up to a quarter of the population said that they were frequently
lonely. In Switzerland, two out of every five people reported sometimes, often, or always feeling so. In the
United Kingdom, the problem had become so significant that in 2018 the prime minister went so far as to
appoint a Minister for Loneliness. One in eight Brits did not have even a single close friend they could rely on,
up from one in ten just five years before. Three-quarters of citizens did not know their neighbors’ names,
while 60 percent of U.K. employees felt lonely at work. The data for Asia, Australia, South America, and Africa
was similarly troubling. Inevitably, months of lockdowns, self-isolation, and social distancing have made this
problem even worse. Young and old, male and female, single and married, rich and poor. All over the world
people are feeling lonely, disconnected, and alienated. We are in the midst of a global loneliness crisis. None
of us, anywhere, is immune.
Six thousand miles from Manhattan’s NoHo district, Saito-san is waking up. Round-cheeked and small, a genial
twinkle in her eye, this widowed mother of two knows all too well what it feels like to be lonely. Burdened
with considerable financial worries, her pension not covering her living costs, bereft of support, and her
children too busy to care, she frequently felt very much on her own. Before, that is, she took a radical, if not
unprecedented, step. Incarcerated now in Tochigi prison, a facility for female offenders, Saito-san is one of
numerous elderly Japanese who have made jail an active life choice. In Japan, crimes committed by people
over the age of sixty-five have quadrupled over the past two decades. Within this age group, 70 percent
reoffend within five years. Prison warden Junko Ageno has no doubt that loneliness is a key driver of this trend
—her charges have told her as much.
Ryukoku University professor Koichi Hamai, who has studied the phenomenon of elderly prisoners, agrees. He
believes that significant numbers of elderly women choose prison as a way to escape how socially isolated
they feel. Jailed typically for minor offenses such as petty shoplifting—one of the easiest crimes you can
commit if going to jail is your goal—40 percent of such prisoners report rarely speaking to their family or not
having one at all; half of the seniors incarcerated for shoplifting in recent years were living alone prior to going
to prison. Many describe jail as a way of creating for themselves a “community that [they] can’t get at home.”
A place where, as one octogenarian inmate explains, “There are always people around, and I don’t feel
lonely.”
An environment that seventy-eight-year-old prisoner Ms. O describes as “an oasis” where “there are many
people to talk to.” A sanctuary that provides not only company but also support and care. The elderly are the
group we are prone to think of first when we consider who is loneliest among us. And indeed, this cohort is
lonelier than average. Already by 2010, 60 percent of U.S. nursing home residents said they never have any
visitors. In the United Kingdom, two-fifths of all older people reported in 2014 that television was their main
company. Meanwhile, in Tianjin, China, an eighty-five-year-old grandfather, one of China’s millions of lonely
elderly, gained international fame in 2017 when he posted a notice on his local bus shelter. “Lonely man in his
80s,” it read. “My hope is that a kindhearted person or family will adopt me.” Tragically, within three months
he was dead. It took many of his neighbors two weeks to notice he was no longer around.
Such stories make hard reading. And they raise huge questions about how we as a society care for our oldest
citizens. Yet it is actually, and perhaps surprisingly, the youngest among us who are the loneliest. I first
became aware of this a few years back when I was teaching graduate university students. For not only was it
obvious to me, when I saw how they interacted during group assignments, that they found their face-to-face
interactions considerably more challenging than previous generations, but as they plumped themselves down
in my office full of anxiety about their coursework and their future job prospects, I was struck by how many
confided in me how lonely and isolated they felt. My students weren’t outliers.
In the United States, slightly more than one in five millennials say they have no friends at all. In the United
Kingdom, three in five 18-to-34-year-olds and nearly half of children aged between 10 and 15 say they are
lonely often or sometimes. Again, this disturbing picture is a global one that in recent years has gotten
progressively worse. Across nearly every country in the OECD (which includes most of Europe, the United
States, Canada, and Australia) the percentage of fifteen-year-olds who say they feel lonely at school rose
between 2003 and 2015.
Again, in the wake of COVID-19 the numbers are likely to be significantly higher. This isn’t just a mental health
crisis. It’s a crisis that’s making us physically ill. The research shows that loneliness is worse for our health
than not exercising, as harmful as being an alcoholic, and twice as harmful as being obese. Statistically,
loneliness is equivalent to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day.
Crucially, this is regardless of what we earn, our gender, age, or nationality. It’s also an economic crisis. Even
prior to COVID-19 in the United States, social isolation was estimated to cost Medicare nearly $7 billion every
year, more than it spends on arthritis and almost as much as it does on high blood pressure—and that’s just
among elderly people. In the United Kingdom, lonely over-50s were estimated to cost the National Health
Service £1.8 billion ($2.2 billion) per year, about the same as spent annually by the entire Ministry of Housing,
Communities, and Local Government.
Meanwhile, U.K. employers were losing £800 million ($994 million) each year due to loneliness-related sick
days, significantly more when productivity losses were also taken into account. And it’s a political crisis too,
fueling divisiveness and extremism in the United States, Europe, and across the globe. Loneliness and right-
wing populism are, as we will see, close bedfellows. Especially concerning is that we are very likely to be
underestimating the true extent of the problem. In part this is because of the stigma associated with
loneliness. For some, admitting they are lonely is a hard thing to do: a third of U.K. employees who feel lonely
at work have never told anyone.
Others may find it difficult to admit even to themselves, believing it to suggest a personal failure, rather than a
consequence of life circumstances and a whole range of social, cultural, and economic factors outside of one’s
individual control. But more than this, the problem is underestimated because of how loneliness is defined.
For not only is loneliness not the same as being alone—you can be physically surrounded by people and still
feel lonely, or you can be alone and not experience loneliness—it has also typically been defined too narrowly.
The loneliness we are experiencing in the twenty-first century is much broader in scope than its traditional
definition.

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THE LONELY CENTURY - BY NOREENA HERTZ

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